Jennifer DiNoia as Elphaba and Hayley Podschun as Glinda in "Wicked" the musical.

Watching Hayley Podschun's captivating Glinda on Thursday night at the Marcus Center, I realized how much this ambitious sorority girl from Oz has in common with the musical in which she co-stars with Elphaba, the future Wicked Witch of the West.

Like the dazzling Glinda, "Wicked" knows how to milk an entrance, fill a room and put on a show. This is the same tour that was here in 2010, and the production values in evidence then continue to impress, from the lavish Edwardian costumes and matching steampunk set to the spectacular lighting design and 14-piece pit orchestra. | June 14, 2013»Read Full Article

The Atlanta rapper's girlfriend, R&B singer Ciara, gave birth to their son, Future Zahir Wilburn, on Monday. But Dad was already reporting to work, kicking off his 45-date tour in Milwaukee at a sold-out Rave Friday night, with tour-mate and opening act Rico Love making a celebrated hometown appearance. | May 24, 2014»Read Full Article

Roxane Gay's breakout year should give readers hope that serious writers still have a place in the hot mess of today's publishing industry.

Gay's recently released debut novel, "An Untamed State" (Black Cat / Grove Press), the story of a young mother kidnapped for ransom by a Haitian gang, earned a glowing review from Holly Bass in The New York Times Book Review. Comparing it to dark Brothers Grimm tales, Bass wrote that the novel's "complex and fragile moral (is) arrived at through great pain and high cost." | May 23, 2014»Read Full Article

They are an effort by movie studios to exploit past success by selling audiences a new and improved version of something they already bought. Who else goes to sequels but the already invested? Having previously hurtled through time on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," Patrick Stewart sets his watch back again in "X-Men: Days of Future Past." | May 23, 2014»Read Full Article

The setting is a sleepy Southern town, in which little has changed since Reconstruction. The season is summer, in which the weather is muggy and fans useless. The protagonist is a headstrong and vocal girl who doesn't remember her mother, reveres her father and admires her athletic older brother. The action toggles between daring childhood adventures and a seismic rupture in long-settled race relations.

I could be describing Harper Lee's"To Kill a Mockingbird," but I'm actually referring to Deborah Wiles' "Revolution," during which 12-year-old Sunny Fairchild recalls the summer of 1964, when her town of Greenwood became the epicenter of efforts to register Mississippi's long-disenfranchised black population so that it could vote for change. | May 23, 2014»Read Full Article

Family vacations are usually imagined one way, and experienced in another. Franny, the matriarch of the Post family in Emma Straub's "The Vacationers," imagines a two-week vacation as a happy celebration of her 35th wedding anniversary and her daughter Sylvia's high school graduation. She rented a house on the island of Mallorca with marble floors, a swimming pool and plenty of room for her family and her best friend,

Charles, an artist and gallery owner, and his husband, Lawrence. | May 23, 2014»Read Full Article

Retired neurosurgeon and bestselling author Ben Carson never apologizes for telling uncomfortable truths about our nation and culture. And that is precisely why Carson, who became an overnight sensation last year for blasting Obamacare at the National Prayer Breakfast, drew a record crowd to the annual Wisconsin Right to Life dinner May 1 at the Wisconsin Center. With 1,500 in attendance, executive director Barbara Lyons noted that an additional 200 to 300 folks had wanted to attend but couldn't be accommodated.

Carson grew up in the ghettos of Detroit and Boston with a single mother who worked two and three jobs to keep her family off welfare. He notes that one of the biggest gifts she gave Carson and his brother was to "turn off the TV and make us read two books a week and write reports on those books, even though she couldn't read those reports herself." | May 23, 2014»Read Full Article

On Fridays I'm posting my thoughts on Lou Reed's solo albums, one album at a time in chronological order of release.

"Animal Serenade" (2004), Lou Reed's seventh live album as a solo performer, was titled and timed to echo his first solo live album, "Rock 'n' Roll Animal," released three decades earlier. While the the powerhouse guitars of Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner sometimes overshadowed Reed on "Rock 'n' Roll Animal," the instrumental support is generally more restrained on "Animal Serenade." Lou is backed by two of his longest and most sympathetic accompanists, guitarist Mike Rathke and bassist Fernando Saunders. There's no drummer on this live album (though Saunders kicks in some electronically generated percussion on a few songs). Vocalist Antony Hegarty adds supporting vocals and takes the lead on a couple of songs. The presence of cellist Jane Scarpantoni makes it easier for Lou to play some of the Velvet Underground songs that featured John Cale's viola. Like "Perfect Night," his other live album from this period, the music is impeccably recorded: if a fly breathed on one of Lou's guitar strings, you'd hear it. | May 23, 2014»Read Full Blog Post

The Best of Brew City is your mobile guide to going out in Milwaukee. Locate events, live music, bars and restaurants near you and in Milwaukee's most popular neighborhoods. Visit bestofbrewcity.com and download the app for iOS or Android today.

The festival season really gets cranking with a fest we can all sink our teeth into: Burlington's ChocolateFest, four days of games, rides, music and, of course, chocolate, starts at 4 p.m. Friday on the Chocolate Festival Grounds, 681 Maryland Ave., Burlington. | May 23, 2014»Read Full Article

As sure as spring follows winter, new food trucks are slipping in among the established fleet on the street.

Consider this a preview; a number of the new kids on the block are still wrapping up their trucks or menus and have yet to debut. Some could begin serving as soon as next week. | May 23, 2014»Read Full Article(7)

After a winter that was, let's say, persistent, chefs are lightening menus for this warmer-at-last season.

Ingredients like peas (from regions already warmer than Wisconsin) are showing up on plates. Much of what's growing locally right now, though, is foraged ingredients — ramps, fiddleheads, watercress and the sought-after morels, which began appearing in the last week or so. | May 23, 2014»Read Full Article